Blood Brothers

  Perhaps wistfully, Nestor thought about that: all light and warmth … but the narrow alley leading to the back of the house and the hay barn was as dark as his intentions. And suddenly he knew how dark they were; so that he might have gone straight to the door and entered, been one with the others, and woke up in the morning with a thick head, a sigh of relief and a clear conscience. But it was not to be, for at that precise moment he heard laughter and the door opened a crack, and he stepped back a pace into the shadows of the alley.

  Then Nestor heard his mother bidding Misha goodnight, the door closing, and the lingering footsteps of two people coming towards him as they made for Misha’s house. And when they stepped into view, and paused silhouetted, her arm hugged Nathan’s, and the starlight gleamed on her smile. And Nestor was cold as stone again, but the fire inside him raged up hot as hell.

  He felt his feet carrying him forward, had no control over them, or over the hand that made a fist and drove for Nathan’s chin, striking him and rocking his head back against the wall. Misha had time for a single gasp as Nathan crumpled—time to stumble backwards, wide-eyed, away from his attacker, and gulp air to make a shout—which came out as a shocked exclamation as finally she recognized … “Nestor.?”

  And as her eyes went wider yet he grabbed her up, muffled her mouth with his hand, and dragged her kicking and biting—but all in silence—along the passage to the barn door, where he lifted the bar with his elbow. Inside, the piled hay made a musty-sweet smell, and the inky darkness was striped with starlight filtering faintly in through a loosely boarded side wall.

  Nestor was aroused now; with his free hand, he tore Misha’s dress open down the front and fondled her firm breasts, and she felt him hard where he pressed himself to her. And the incredible became possible, even likely, as he half-pushed, half-fell with her on to the hay.

  Misha had always known Nestor was strong, but the strength she felt now was that of the rapist: mindless, brutal, fevered and phenomenal! His breath was hot and sweet with wine, his kisses rough and lusty, and his hands even more so where they alternated between squeezing her breasts and dragging her legs apart, positioning her on the hay. And to accompany every move, each panting breath, he tore at her clothing, and at his own.

  Now she fought him in earnest—raking his face, trying to butt him, bite him, bring her knee into his groin—all to no avail; in just a few seconds she was exhausted. Pinned down, breathless and gasping, her fate seemed certain. She drew air massively to scream,and Nestor brought his face down on hers, crushing her mouth. How she tossed and wriggled then, desperate to be rid of him as he threw her dress up over the lower part of her face … and a bar of starlight fell across her forehead and eyes.

  Seeing the fear in Misha’s eyes, Nestor flinched inside, in his guts. Perhaps for her part she felt the change in him, which came and passed in a moment. And: “Why?” she panted, as he completed the work on her underclothes. “Nestor, why?”

  He began to come down on her, his hand behind and under her, opening her up. “When your father and brothers know,” he husked, “they’ll either kill me or see to it that we’re married. Whichever, it will be decisive.”

  His mouth closed on hers; she felt his manhood throbbing, thrusting, searching her out, and wondered: Married? Then why didn’t you just ask me? For after all, she had always known it would be one of them, Nestor or Nathan. She hadn’t known which one, that was all. Now she did, and it wasn’t Nestor.

  But maybe she knew too late …

  Nana Kiklu kneeled by her stone fireplace and chopped a few last vegetable ingredients into the stew bubbling in a copper pan. Her boys would be in soon, Nestor from the welcoming party and Nathan back from walking Misha home. They might have eaten already, but with their appetites it would make little difference. And home cooking was always best.

  Nana smiled as she thought of Misha: that girl was really smitten with her boys. But then, she always had been. Sooner or later she would make her choice, and Nana hoped … but no, she must be impartial, and certainly she loved them both and had no favourite. But Nathan, Nathan …

  The smile fell from her comely face, became a frown, and she sighed. If not Misha Zanesti, then who would take Nathan? And if it was him, then what of Nestor? For they had grown up together, all three, so that whichever way it went the choosing would be painful and the parting of the ways hard.

  And again Nana thought: Nathan, ah, Nathan!

  Misha understood him and his ways; something of them, anyway. And as for Nana: she, of course, understood them only too well! She need only look at him to see his father, Harry Keogh, called Dwellersire, looking back at her. Fortunate that no one had ever noticed or remarked upon it; but times had been hard in those days, when people had enough to do minding their own business without minding the business of others. And Nathan’s differences hadn’t become really marked until he was five, in the year after the last great battle, which had destroyed his alien father along with the first and last of the Wamphyri.

  On occasion, infrequently, Nana had seen Lardis Lidesci look strangely, wonderingly at Nathan. But even if he suspected, Lardis would never say anything. He had always been the strong one, Lardis: the protector. And anyway, he got along well with Nathan and liked him; that is to say, he got on as well as could be expected with someone who kept so far apart.

  Nathan had always kept himself apart, yes, except from Misha, of course … And now Nana was back to that.

  Finished with her vegetables, she sighed again, stood up, crossed to the window and looked out. Twilight was quickly fading into night now; the stars were very bright over the barrier range, and a mist was rolling down off the mountains and across the lower slopes. In the old days a mist like that would have sent shivers down Nana’s spine, but no more. And her mind went back all of eighteen years and more to just such times—and one night in particular—in The Dweller’s garden on Starside. What she had done then … maybe it had been a mistake, maybe not, but her boys were the result and she wouldn’t change that.

  Nestor and Nathan: they’d never known their true father; which, considering what came later, was probably just as well. But for all that Harry had been (and must now forever remain) a stranger to them, the one unknown factor in their young lives, still he’d left his mark on them, and especially on Nathan. Oh, Harry Dwellersire had marked both of her sons, Nana knew, but in Nathan it burned like a brand.

  Burned! She sniffed the air and went back to the fire. For that would never do, to let her good stew burn. But in the pot, the water was deep, simmering, not boiling over at all. And so the smell must be something else entirely. A smell at first, and now … a sound, which Nana remembered.

  Impossible!

  She flew to the window. Out there, the mist was leprous white in moon—and starlight, undulating, thickly concentrated where it lay on the foothills and sent tendrils creeping over the north wall and through gaps in the stockade’s inner planking. Nana had never seen a mist like it. No, she had, she had! But there are certain things you daren’t recall, and this mist was one of them.

  The sound came again—a sputtering roar—and a shadow blotting out the stars where it passed overhead. And drifting down from the darkness and the night, that nameless reek, that stench from memory, that impossible smell. Utterly impossible! But if that were so …

  … Then what was the meaning of the sudden, near—distant tumult which Nana now heard rising out of the town? What was all that shouting? What were those hoarse, terrified, Szgany voices screaming?

  No need to ask, for she knew the answer well enough. “Wamphyri! Wamphyri!”

  And as the throbbing sputter of propulsors sounded again, closer, shaking the house, the one thought in Nana’s mind was for her boys and the girl they loved: Nathan! Nestor! Misha!

  She ran to the door and threw it open.

  Nathan! Nestor! Misha!

  The bellowing of warriors seemed to sound from every quarter, and the sickening stench of their exhaust vap
ours touched and tainted everything. Nathan! Nestor! Misha!

  Something unbelievable, monstrous, armoured, fell out of the sky, directly on to Nana’s house. Along with the adjacent houses, her place collapsed into dust, debris, ruins, like a ripe puffball when you step on it. Shattered, the door flew from its leather hinges and knocked Nana down in the billowing dust of the street. But even as she dragged herself away from the hissing and the bellowing—and now the screaming, which rose up out of the smoking rubble of the nearby buildings—still she repeated, over and over:

  “Nathan! Nestor! Misha!” And wondered, would she ever see them again?

  Five minutes earlier, in the barn:

  Misha felt Nestor beginning to enter her, and in desperation gasped, “Let me … let me help you.”

  He lifted his face from her breasts and stared at her disbelievingly. But then, as she reached down a hand between their bodies, he could only grunt an astonished, “What?”

  Certainly Nestor could use help; not only was his drunkenness a handicap in its own right, he was also inexperienced. For all his swaggering and boasting among Settlement’s youths, and his apparent familiarity with certain of the village girls, he was a virgin no less than Misha herself. Indeed, more so, for she at least seemed to know something.

  She caught him up where he jerked and strained, and tightened her slender hand to a yoke around the neck of his pulsing member. As she began to work at him he murmured, “Ah!” and rose up from her a little, to allow her more freedom. Never releasing him for a moment but continuing to gratify his flesh, she at once took the opportunity to roll him on to his back.

  He was young and full of lust; her hand was a warm engine of pleasure, squeezing and pumping at him; it couldn’t last.

  Aching to touch her, tug at her, feel the warm resilience of her perspiring breasts, he reached out a trembling hand—but too late. And as his fluids geysered and splashed down in long, hot pulses on to his belly, so Nestor groaned and flopped back in the hay. But even lying there in a mixture of mindless ecstasy and empty frustration, still he sensed her straightening her clothing and drawing away from him. And as his tottering senses found their own level, suddenly he wondered:

  How? How had she known what to do?

  And trapping her wrist before she could stand up and run from him, his question was written there on his face plain for her to see. As was the answer on hers.

  “Nathan!” he snarled then, as she snatched her hand away, got to her feet and backed off. He made to get after her, came to his knees. If she’d learned that much from his not-so-dumb brother, then obviously she knew all of it. And now more than ever, Nestor desired to be into her. If only for the hell of it.

  Misha saw it in his face, shuddered her terror and flew for the door; he hurled himself ahead of her, slammed it shut. And moving menacingly after her where she stumbled in the dark, he huskily asked: “But why? Why with him? Why Nathan?”

  “Because he … he needed someone,” Misha’s voice was a frightened whisper. “Because he needed something. But mainly because … because there was no one else who cared.”

  “Well, now there is someone else,” Nestor growled, his head clearing. “Me! Except I don’t care, not any longer. No, but there is something I need.”

  He caught her and lifted her skirts, and when his hand went to her throat she knew that this time she mustn’t fight. But she could still protest. And: “Nestor, please don’t!” she begged him.

  “What you’ve done for him, you can do for me,” his voice was choked with lust and fury.

  “But we didn’t …” she gulped as he pinned her to the wall and positioned himself between her legs. “We’ve never …”

  “Liar!” he snarled. For in his mind’s eye he’d seen them: Nathan and Misha, panting out their lust as their flesh heaved and shuddered. And hoarsely he ordered her: “Now do it, put me in. And after that … just pretend that I’m Nathan!”

  It was like an invocation.

  “B-b-but you’re not!” said a stuttering voice from where the barn door now stood open. And it was Nathan, silhouetted against the night, one hand to his face, and the other a fist which was wrapped round the door’s inch-by-three ironwood bar.

  Nestor half-sobbed, half-moaned as he thrust Misha aside and went for Nathan’s throat—and ran head-on into the flat side of the other’s ironwood club! It smacked him in the face, shook his teeth and flattened his nose, struck him down like a swatted fly. He lay there groaning, clutching his face, while Misha stumbled towards Nathan where he stood with legs spread wide and feet firmly planted, and the bar held high for a second blow. Maybe he would do it, and maybe not, but Misha knew she couldn’t let it happen.

  And neither could Nathan. Even before she could reach him, he’d turned away and let the bar fall.

  At which point both of them heard the uproar swelling out from the town’s crowded meeting place, and the throb of powerful propulsors overhead. If they had heard that ominous sound before, then they’d been too young for it to make any lasting impression. But still it was strange, frightening, evocative; as was the wafting stench which suddenly accompanied it.

  They looked at each other, clung in each other’s arms for the very briefest moment—

  —Only to be wrenched apart as the roof caved in and the barn flew apart! Then, as their entire world collapsed in chaos all around them, the nightmare they had just lived through commenced its long spiral down from one dark level to depths more lightless yet…

  Nestor was a child of ten again, playing in the woods with his lieutenant, Nathan, and the Szgany thrall Misha. He, of course, was the vampire Lord Nestor. That was what he had wanted to be all of his young life—what he would always want to be, and the only role he would ever accept—Wamphyri!

  But this time, and for all that the plot was simple, the game wasn’t working out. Nathan and Misha had joined forces to escape from the aerie (a ramshackle treehouse) into the woods, and Nestor was intent upon finding and punishing them. Indeed, and after a decent interval, they were supposed to let him find them, except today they didn’t seem to be playing according to the rules. And though Nestor had searched for all he was worth for at least half an hour, still they continued to elude him. So that his mounting anger where he slipped through the green maze of the forest, pausing every now and then to sniff at the air in approved vampire fashion, might well be equal (in young boy measure) to that of the legendary Wamphyri themselves. And how he would punish this wayward lieutenant, and this ingrate Szgany slut, when he discovered them!

  Normally it was easy to find them. He might lean against the bole of a great tree—stand there absolutely motionless, holding his breath in the forest’s often preternatural silence—and wait for a telltale sound to give them away: a furtive rustle of undergrowth, the snap of a dry twig, their whispering, conspiratorial voices. Or if not “voices” in the plural, one voice at least: Misha’s. For of course Nathan could not, or would not speak, not without sputtering and stuttering like a fool. And so it would be Misha leading the way, doing all the whispering, the planning, the … cheating?

  That’s what it was: cheating! Spoiling the game! For by now Nestor should have found them, chastised them, sent them to pick nuts and berries for him as punishment, and stood over them scowling while they filled his mother’s basket. Which was the real reason they were out here in the first place: to fill Nana Kiklu’s basket with wild fruit and nuts. Except, and as always, it had seemed a good idea to turn work into a game.

  And now he shouted into the green haze all around, “Nathaaan!…. Mish-aaa!” … and waited for their answer.

  Hah! Try waiting for a birthday, or a wish to come true!

  So now there was only one thing for it, the one infallible method. Nestor didn’t like to use it, for it seemed to him an intrusion: like that time he stumbled over lovers in the long grass of the foothills, and watched them at their play. He had never forgotten it: all naked backsides and thrusting, jerking flesh. And hurtin
g, too, from the sound of it. If that was love you could keep it! But at the same time he’d known it was wrong of him to watch them … as had the young man when it was over and finally he’d sensed a peeping-tom there! What a chase that had been, and Nestor lucky to get out of it unscathed.

  This wasn’t the same, he knew, but it was similar, and he and his brother had this unwritten rule never to use it. Even the very young have things they would rather keep secret, entirely to themselves. Especially their thoughts …

  But on the other hand, didn’t Nathan intrude upon him, too, in his dreams?

  Of course, Nathan would know what he’d done; he would feel him there in his mind, and slam it like a door in his face. Ah, but if he and Misha had played the game as had been intended, Nestor wouldn’t have to do it, now would he?

  He sat down with his back to a mossy bole, closed his eyes and let his mind drift. Somewhere out there, Misha and Nathan were hiding from him. Somewhere in the deep woods, which they all three knew so well, his brother (no, his “lieutenant”) and the Szgany thrall Misha trembled in terror where they huddled in the forest’s green expanse. But being Wamphyri, Nestor could smell them out! He could extend his senses, or issue a vampire mist, and know when its lapping tendrils touched their shivering flesh! He could scry on them from afar and see them where they cowered! And only let him catch a glimpse of their surroundings, he would know their secret location on the instant!

  And so his thoughts drifted out until they touched upon Nathan’s. It was difficult and would have been even harder if his brother weren’t distracted, if he’d been looking inwards, as was his wont. But this time his thoughts weren’t clouded; his mind was clear for once, and concentrated upon something entirely different from Nestor and the game. Concentrated in fact upon Misha…